I'm looking to upgrade my 5850 1GB for use with my single monitor
I play primarily BF3, Shift1-2, DiRT2-3...then may movies with DiRT2-3 replays with FRAPs (if possible in HD)
Please consider the CPU bottleneck (if any)

please suggest a $400, a $300, & $200 budget strictly ATI cards mainly due to a friend who works for company...wanna keep her employed

I play primarily BF3, Shift1-2, DiRT2-3...then may movies with DiRT2-3 replays with FRAPs (if possible in HD)Please consider the CPU bottleneck (if any)

please suggest a $400, a $300, & $200 budget strictly ATI cards mainly due to a friend who works for company...wanna keep her employed

Advance thanks to the community

I'm in a similar boat as you as my latest Radeon card is a 5870.

First, with AMD releasing more of the 7xxx series last month, I would say you might as well get a 7800 or 7900 series card. There is no point getting a 6xxx series card - I don't think you will save that much and your 7xxx card will be supported longer.

You need to answer a couple more questions: what resolution are you playing at and what are your avg framerates? E.g. with BF3?

I think with a 3GHz Core 2 Duo/4GB RAM you might get better framerates with a newer card but you need to go up one price level at least. If you spend $250 for a 7xxx gen card you will likely not get much of a dramatic improvement. If you spend $400 you will hopefully notice a difference. Note: this is just a rough guess on my part, and again depends on what games you play, how old they are (DX10? DX11?), your resolution, etc. Best to scour the usual benchmarking sites for PC configs that are similar to yours.

That being said I did recently put a GF 570 in a separate rig (Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz) and it did give me a significant improvement over my old 8800 GTX. However, in this case I believe my C2Q at 2.4 GHz is a bottleneck.

Note with the longer $400+ cards they may not fit in certain case configurations, so make sure you can return your card if it doesn't fit. You may also need a new PSU.

as long as I set my motherboard this wayit'll probably fit ...that's a 8800GT btw.

thanks for the PSU advice, I totally forgot about it.

btw CR6, maybe relevant to your interest

Originally Posted by Cpl LedanekQuote:Originally Posted by 123Lanoixim trying to sell my 6970would you be interested? below $300doesn't quite fit my black/red them case... but will pass this along three ppl I know looking for the same thing I'm looking for.

I finally installed the MSI|R7870 (pictures to follow) into the Stacker and it had no problem swallowing it. So far, no games but a few DiRT3 benches, running on my CORSAIR CMPSU-620HX 620W, and you can barely hear it over my case fans.

I ran a Render.PerfOverlayVisible 1 on the Jet Mission w/ BF3 and my CPU is all over the graph.

I wish I could record it with most current FRAPS, but it affects the graph heavily. Wish there is another BF3 benchmark that I can run and post.

I was kinda upset CompUsa/ TigerDirect would not let me pricematch NewEgg the 850HX, so I lighten up their inventory. I guess, NewEgg wins this round.